Bloody Elbow September MMA Meta-Rankings:  Lightweight

This is by far the most competitive division. I mean there are more promotions running serious lightweight divisions with multiple legitimate contenders than any other.

The UFC has 9 of the top 25, but only 3 of the top 10, and only one UFC fighter - B.J. Penn - is ranked in the top 5. Personally I think its a bit of bullshit that the UFC fighters who aren't B.J. are rated so low. Part of it is the unique match-making of Joe Silva who seems hesitant to match top contenders up very often. This means guys like #13 Tyson Griffin and #8 Kenny Florian are virtually in parallel universes despite both being quite close to title shots.

Of course they've both got tough fights coming up -- #7 Sean Sherk and #12 Joe Stevenson -- respectively so nothing is guaranteed. But honestly I'd rather see Sherk and Stevenson face-off to determine which of the guys to recently get smoked by B.J. can return to contention. I mean what happens if Sherk AND Stevenson win? They'll likely have to fight each other anyway before either one gets a title shot.

DREAM has 9 of the top 25 and more importantly 5 of the top 10. I've never seen a dramatic tournament of top fighters do so little to clarify the rankings. #3 Shinya Aoki has already fought and won, beating unranked Todd Moore at the last DREAM event. I haven't heard anything I believe about who the top lightweights will face at DREAM's year end event. But a Hansen/Alvarez or Calvancante rematch would clear up the rankings some.

Meanwhile, Strikeforce has 3 of the top 15 and is rumored to be borrowing #10 Tatsuya Kawajiri from DREAM to join loaner #15 Mitsuhiro Ishida. Both would be good challenges for Strikeforce champ #9 Josh Thomson or ex-champ #11 Gilbert Melendez.

#3 Eddie Alvarez is rumored to be fighting the unranked Nick Diaz for the EliteXC belt that #25 K.J. Noons vacated. That fight supposedly will happen on EliteXC's November Showtime event. Should be a fun fight. After that, EliteXC will really need to scramble to build their lightweight divsion.

World Victory Road champ #2 Takanori Gomi isn't looking quite as stranded in Sengoku now that their lightweight tourny is well underway. #19 Eiji Mitsuoka is the only semi-finalist to be ranked, largely as a result of his 2007 win over #6 Joachim Hansen. I'm looking forward to the finals of that tourny.

ABOUT THE META-RANKINGS: A full methodology is in the extended entry, but the short version is that they are a compilation of the rankings of 20+ leading MMA web sites and magazines. In short the meta-rankings don't represent the opinion of me or the Bloody Elbow staff, rather they are an attempt to quantify the consensus opinions of the MMA online community at large.

Based on the premise that opinions are like assholes, everybody has one and they all stink, instead of putting up our own subjective fighter rankings, we compile and average the rankings of every source we could find online.

The goal is to show how the MMA community rates the fighters, not to bore you with our opinions.

Be sure and look at the points, they're a much more telling number than the ranking. There's clearly a huge gulf between the top 9 fighters and those that follow.

A total of 45 fighters were ranked in the top 25 by one source or another. For reasons of sanity I only track the top 25 most highly rated fighters.

25 points are awarded for a first place ranking, 16 for a 10th place ranking, 1 for a 25th place ranking. A formula is used to "normalize" the data so all fighters are awarded points from those lists that do not include a full 25 fighters. Each site consulted awards a total of 325 points. Fuller explanation below.

Rankings were compiled from the following sites: WAMMA, MMA Fighting, MMA-ELO, FCFighter, TAGG Radio, Inside Fighting, MMA Ratings, Fight Magazine,  MMA 4 Real, Figure 4 Online, Houston Chronicle/Brawl Sports, HDNet/Inside Fighting, MMA Playground, FightMatrix, MMA On Tap, Cage Potato, Sherdog, MMA Weekly, 411 Mania,  and MMA/VT (Japan).

The normalization scheme as explained by JCS of FightMatrix  is here:

The “normalization number” (new name) would be:

120
divided by
(Total Fighters Found in Any List minus 10)

Every fighter found somewhere else, but on a Top 10 list would be assigned this number.

The “normalization” number would not apply to a fighter not found on a Top 25 list. They would simply get 0.

So the process would be:

Do all of the Top 25 lists first, #1 = 25, #2 = 24…. #24 = 2, #25 = 1
Do all of the Top 10 lists, same scoring structure.. stops at #10 = 16

Figure out that normalization variable.

Fill in the normalization variable to all fighters not found in the Top 10 lists, but found elsewhere.

Do your totals and rank.